Alibaba Cloud Malaysia data center commences operations

Meets growing demand in the region and enables enterprises to run workloads in Malaysia

IFM Correspondent

Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group, yesterday opened its data center in Malaysia. Located strategically for Southeast Asian coverage, the data center will meet the surging demand for scalable and cost-effective cloud computing services among enterprises in the region.

As the first global public cloud platform in Malaysia, the new center will provide Malaysian enterprises a local choice to build their businesses and run their applications on a powerful, reliable and secure cloud platform. Customers with low latency or data sovereignty requirements will be able to store and process huge amounts of data in Malaysia. By migrating IT infrastructure to the cloud, enterprises can leverage Alibaba Cloud’s scalable and cost effective cloud services to scale rapidly, accelerate innovation and expand their geographic reach in minutes.

The power and network strength of the data center reaches beyond Malaysia. It provides flexibility for enterprises as far away as Singapore, Hong Kong and Thailand to subscribe to services according to different disaster recovery and network speed requirements. The link to the data centers in Hong Kong and Singapore via Alibaba Cloud’s backbone network will provide fast, stable, secure and private or dedicated connections between different cloud environments, providing customers efficient cross-border hybrid cloud solutions.

The data center will offer a comprehensive suite of cloud products and services ranging from elastic computing, database service, networking, security, middleware, to analytics and big data. This will encompass the full range of Alibaba Cloud’s solutions which will satisfy the needs of governments and large corporations as well as enterprises in the Internet, game, multimedia, mobile Internet and finance industries. The big data service “MaxCompute” (a big data platform that allows users to store and process massive amounts of structural data to levels as high as terabyte or even petabyte) in particular, will bring sophisticated data intelligence services ranging from data processing and analytics to machine learning to Malaysian businesses, driving their technology-enabled business transformation.

Alibaba Cloud has dedicated a local team of solutions architects and professional consultants to provide services from cloud consulting to after-sales support, helping customers of all sizes as they move to the cloud and enabling them to realize their full economic potential.

Simon Hu, Senior Vice President of Alibaba Group and President of Alibaba Cloud said: “The Malaysia data center will give us a leading edge to support the growth of SMEs and other businesses in the region. For SMEs and start-ups in particular, access to scalable and cost effective cloud services, as well as a local support team are decisive factors when they choose a cloud service partner. Alibaba Cloud’s powerful and comprehensive solutions will offer smaller companies a level playing field to compete in global trade. Large enterprises, on the other hand, will enjoy the convenience and security of local data storage, helping them to meet applicable regulatory requirements.”

In March this year, Alibaba Group announced the setup of the first overseas e-hub under eWTP or Electronic World Trade Platform in Malaysia. The cloud solutions offered by the data center will facilitate seamless cross-border online businesses for Malaysian enterprises.

“In the near future, cloud computing, data technology and AI will become fundamental tools for all companies and organizations to operate effectively. The newly opened data center will boost Malaysia’s cloud infrastructure and be the digital foundation to realize the eWTP vision in the country,” Hu added.

The new data center in Malaysia will add to Alibaba Cloud’s 14 data centers worldwide, covering mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Australia, the Middle East, Europe, and the U.S. (East and West Coast).